E123: Your Everyday Stress Response Shows Up In Labor

Labor has a way of turning your everyday stress habits up to full volume. So before we talk about the “perfect” birth plan, we zoom out and ask something more revealing: when your day goes sideways, what do you actually do? I walk through two questions I use with my doula clients to quickly understand how a pregnant person and their partner respond to frustration, surprises, and uncertainty, because those default patterns often show up in the birth room.

We start with the small stuff, the traffic jam moments, the work disruptions, the tiny hits to your expectations. Some of us roll with it and move on. Some of us need a pause, a vent, a cry, or a quick analysis before we can re-enter the plan. Watching partners answer side-by-side is powerful, because it shows where you naturally match and where you might misread each other under pressure. That insight helps you build a support team mindset for labor, when the unexpected is basically guaranteed.

Then we go to the big stuff: grief, job loss, long-term stress, the problems you cannot solve in a single day. We talk about common coping mechanisms like planning, list making, internalizing, talking it out with a safe person, or using task-based focus to stay grounded. We connect those tools to postpartum life and newborn reality, including feeding and sleep challenges that can be improved but not fully controlled. I also share why protecting your relationship matters months down the road, when “real life” returns and patience can wear thin.

If you are preparing for birth, supporting a partner, or simply trying to become more resilient, this one gives you practical questions you can use today. Subscribe, share with a friend who is expecting, and leave a review so more families can find grounded, realistic birth and postpartum support.

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Show Credits

Host: Angie Rosier 
Music: Michael Hicks 
Photographer: Toni Walker
Episode Artwork: Nick Greenwood 
Producer: Gillian Rosier Frampton
Voiceover: Ryan Parker

Transcript

Welcome And Doula Perspective

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Welcome to the Ordinary Doula Podcast with Andy Roser, hosted by Birth Learning, where we help prepare folks for labor and birth with expertise coming from 20 years of experience in a busy Doula practice, helping thousands of people prepare for labor, providing essential knowledge and tools for positive and empowering birth experiences.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

I'm your host, Angie Rogier, and as always, happy to be with you today. Thanks for sharing a little bit of time with us, whether you're driving, walking, trying to sleep, trying not to sleep, um, working, whatever it is you're doing. Thanks for being here with us.

The Daily Frustration Question

SPEAKER_00 1:04

I want to um chat with you about a couple of questions I use as I prepare my clients for labor and delivery and birth and postpartum for that matter. Um, so as I meet with clients, uh my birth clients, I'm gonna spend a good four-ish hours with them before labor, four to sometimes five, before labor ever starts, right? So part of that is getting to know each other, um, getting to know each other pretty deeply in in the amount of time that we have, right? There's only so much you can do in that amount of time, but um some pretty pointed questions to be able to know how I can best help them. And there's two questions that are fascinating to me. Um, I love to learn people's responses to these questions. And as I I have kind of gathered data over the years, there's some themes that um that come out of this. And oftentimes I'm working with, well, it's usually a pregnant person, right? And usually a male support part support person as a partner. Not always, but usually that's the case. And so there's some themes that come out just based on the normalcy of of uh how people view things differently, how men view things differently than women. And a couple of the questions I ask, one of them is um on a daily basis, when things crop up or come up that you didn't expect, things you didn't want, things you might not like, like how do you respond? What's a what's a common response when you hit a traffic jam you didn't expect, or somebody at work does something outside of your control, or um, you know, something you can't find something that you need, a frustration comes up, really, something that you're not too super jazzed about. So I I ask these questions to both a support person, which is usually a man or a dad, and the pregnant person who's usually a woman or a mom. Um and we ask them together, of course, like they watch each other answer these questions. And these are usually people who know each other pretty well. If they're partners or you know, have been together a long time, um, they're gonna kind of help each other answer these questions, which I think is pretty fascinating. And one thing that comes up a lot um for men is they're asked how they respond when just the unexpected happens on a daily basis. A lot of them say, I just kind of roll with it. I just, you know, I just kind of roll with it and move on to the next thing. Um, or just get focused, like, all right, that happened, how can we get back to what I intended to do, or um, you know, the what the main goal is here. And a lot of women, on the other hand, might look at it and say, Well, I get really frustrated. I have a moment. I'm gonna like uh just pause for a minute and I might whine about it, or I might complain about it, I might cry about it. Um, and then usually I'll kind of analyze things and pick up the pieces and move on from there. Um, and some people are totally switched, right? There's some role reversal there that happens sometimes. Um, but that it's fascinating to see how people respond differently. And kind of what we're getting at there is the overall response

How Habits Show Up In Labor

SPEAKER_00 4:10

that people are going to have during the labor process. There's for sure guaranteed gonna be some traffic jams in the labor process. There's gonna be some some uh frustration, some surprises, some, oh, I didn't know this was gonna happen today. Um, we can guarantee that. We can't guarantee a lot. We don't know how things are gonna go, but we know there's gonna be some things we didn't know how they were gonna go. So that kind of gets us a good gauge as we articulate as a little support team. Um, and they really truly do know these things about each other, but as we kind of um pull it out and tease it out, um we can kind of look for patterns and things as they navigate the process of labor delivery, birth, and how things might go for them there. So it also flags to me if I have a, you know, somebody who's gonna fall apart, have a little come apart when something doesn't go how they wanted or expected, that's gonna be to me and the partner, you know, whoever the support partner is, or the as we're making a little team there, um, how we can support that and be prepared for that for sure. So as you're preparing to maybe you're preparing to have a baby or helping others to prepare, kind of kind of explore that a little bit. Like when things don't go great in a day, how do you, what's a common response for you? Because we're not gonna get brand new responses just for labor. We don't develop new skills we're gonna use for the first and last time that day that we're having a baby. We're gonna just fall back habitually on what we normally kind of do, our our patterns of habit.

Coping With The Big Stuff

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Um, another question as I take that a little bit deeper is I I explore with them, with partners and and uh the pregnant people, what what they um, how they respond when the big stuff in life happen life happens, like the hard stuff, the um, you know, this isn't just a traffic jam, but it's gonna affect your life for a period of time, maybe a few weeks, maybe um, you know, something that feels debilitating emotionally or physically. And, you know, some examples are a uh a loss in the family. If we lose a family member or a friend, or there's a job loss, or a big stressful move across the country, or um, gosh, the list could go on and on and on. For those of you who remember the year of 2020, it could be that that year when something's, you know, we have to deal with something for quite a while. And and the question is, what do you do? How do you cope? What are some mechanisms you might lean on when life is overall distressing and you can't just get rid of it in a day? It's not a solvable, a one-day solved problem. And those questions are pretty fascinating as well. So many um of the partners or or the the male people that I talk to about um, well, there's there's themes here in responses. Some of them um say, well, I want to fix it, you know, so I'll make a list and I'll see what we can do to fix it. Um others say upright, just say I shut down, I internalize that. Maybe it's a partner, maybe it's some friends, maybe it's other mom friends or family members who have done the same thing, somebody who a safe space again where they can talk it out. Um some people want to have a plan, like let's have a plan or um a busyness, like sometimes having a little bit of minutia, like a little bit of just task-oriented stuff, whether it's uh has nothing to do with the problem and I can't solve the a lot of times these things aren't solvable. Um, but just having a task to do some of them say organizing or cleaning um can be something that they do

Tools For Newborn Life And Stress

SPEAKER_00 7:44

there. So kind of what we're exploring there is that they're bringing a baby into their world, right? This unit, um, this mom and partner are bringing a little tiny baby. If it's their first baby, that's the biggest change in life, right? Second or third babies, there's still continued changes there. Um, but they're bringing a baby into their home, into their relationship, into their schedule. Um, and they have to cope with that for a period of time. Like there's gonna be some time, whether it's three days, three weeks, three months, three years, as they get used to what that means to have a little baby in their life. And giving them permission to lean on those tools, to be aware of their tools, to um maybe shift some tools and other resources for other tools when necessary. And some of the tools fit in really nicely, like um solving, right? Like, all right, I want to I want to attack this and and find a solution for it if I can. Um, and we can't totally find a solution for newborns being newborns, right? For feeding challenges or sleep challenges that are common in those early days and weeks. I mean, we can minimize them, but we can't get rid of them altogether. Um, but but having realistic expectations will help as well. And then using those coping techniques, whether that is providing time for either parent to just be alone and to do some non-baby tasks, sometimes is nice. Um, it's pretty intensive in the first few weeks for sure. Some people love that period, some people don't love that period, but giving permission to um allow themselves and allow each other to be gentle to themselves, gentle to relationships. And then also if we have little ones like toddlers or preschoolers or other children who are having a new baby coming to their lives and their schedule, and and that can be disruptive, letting them have the space to cope in their age-appropriate way. A two-year-old's gonna cope very differently with that than um uh one of the parents, obviously. So that's kind of a um something I want you to explore. Like, how how do you, when on a daily basis, if you're preparing to have a baby, how do you deal with the daily frustrations when you're kind of pressed with something unexpected that happens in the day? How do you deal with it? Because that's gonna happen during labor. And then the big stuff, how do you cope and having some coping mechanisms that you can kind of lean on during that time as you're getting used to things? Hopefully, these are some realistic tools, things you can apply um today or when the baby's born, when you're preparing for that. A lot of our tools are just in our head, right? Like as far as like it's mindfulness, it's being aware, it's having realistic expectations that can help us be prepared for what's coming up. Hopefully that can be a little bit helpful for you. I love to find these things out about people and learn about them. Really rarely do I do I hear actually unhealthy mechanisms. I've probably done this question for, I don't know, thousands of people and gotten uh thematic responses only once, which is remarkable to me, only once did a dad say, Well, I drink. Um, but uh, you know, and sometimes people say, I sleep. My my sleeping mechanism, you know, sleeping is my my coping mechanism, and um, and there's there's lots of different coping mechanisms, and just to be aware that we have them, whether we realize that or not, we all have some coping mechanisms. Some people's are look very different, right? And and the oppositenesses of uh of what men and women often do for coping is fascinating to me as that interplay happens, um, as they kind of play off of each other and understanding that hopefully part of my goal in addressing this question or this uh this exploring this with them before it ever even happens is to have an awareness, right? To build because it can be stressful and strenuous on a relationship to have a baby, but to build um to build a a stronger bond there as they work through that and realize that it could be difficult um but to work through that together.

Protecting The Relationship Over Time

SPEAKER_00 11:49

I met with a couple um recently for a lactation appointment. It was their booth birth doula months ago, and also have seen them a few times for lactation, but now the baby's eight months old, right? So we are eight months into being parents at this point, and um you know, life is back full swing. He's traveling a lot for work, she's back in the office full-time. Um, and it was interesting in this visit. Uh, I haven't seen them for a few months, but they had some challenges with feeding point at this point, um, to see that they were kind of eating at each other pretty good during our appointment, their patience and their their um sweetness towards each other there has had waned pretty pretty good in the last few months as real life stressors um came on and they're you know dealing with the day-to-day of a growing, more active, more mobile baby, which is kind of interesting. So keep keep the integrity of relationships, give relationships um some attention. And as you understand who it is you're working with on your support team, that can be helpful and how they're gonna deal with things, how you're gonna deal with things, and how you can help each other deal with things. Hopefully that's helpful for you as you prepare for um the day you have a baby, the days afterwards you have a baby and bring a baby home. How do you deal with the daily and how do you deal with the big stuff in life? Um, those are good questions for any of us to ponder. And um hopefully we don't have to do it a whole lot, right? Um we like to look that life is good a lot of the times, but definitely realistically, there's challenges for so many all along the

Final Reflections And Reach Out

SPEAKER_00 13:21

way. Hopefully that's helpful for you, and I want to thank you for spending time today with me on the Ordinary Doula podcast. As always, please reach out to someone and make a connection. You never know when you won't be able to. So don't let that time go by. Reach out to someone and make a human connection. We need each other. Uh, we'll see you next time on the Ordinary Doula Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Episode credits will be in the show notes. Tune in next time as we continue to explore the many aspects of giving birth.